Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë
“Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing
a deceitful disposition; and I’ll let everybody at Lowood know afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A
what you are, and what you have done.”
ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have
“Jane, you don’t understand these things: children must be been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced
Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the
corrected for their faults.”
“Deceit is not my fault!” I cried out in a savage, high voice. flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent
condition, when half-an-hour’s silence and reflection
“But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and
now return to the nursery—there’s a dear—and lie down a had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness
of my hated and hating position.
little.”
“I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as
soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.”
aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its
“I will indeed send her to school soon,” murmured Mrs. after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if
Reed sotto voce; and gathering up her work, she abruptly I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and
quitted the apartment.
asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew, partly from experience
I was left there alone—winner of the field. It was the hardest
battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained: I pulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbu-
and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her re-
stood awhile on the rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, lent impulse of my nature.
and I enjoyed my conqueror’s solitude. First, I smiled to myself I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce
and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling
did the accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel than that of sombre indignation. I took a book—some Arabian
tales; I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could with its elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings
make
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